Team Lahore managed to dethrone the defending champions Karachi by a winning margin of seven points Royal Palm Golf and Country Club Golf Course.
The Legends Golf Classic Event was fought out between Team Karachi comprising 32 golf players of substance and Team Lahore comprising an equal number of combatants, over three days and two golf arenas, with round one at DHA Defence Raya Golf Course and round 2 and 3 at the impeccable Royal Palm Golf and Country Club Golf Course.
After some hard fought matches, Lahore prevailed with Team Lahore aggregating 35. 5 to Karachi’s 28. 5.
Playing under the captaincy of Imran Habib, Team Karachi was a blend of age and experience, yet they failed to match the cool maturity of the Lahori contenders whose shot making was classy and tipped the scales in their favour.
Royal Palm Golf Course was in excellent condition and much appreciated by the visitors from Karachi, who although lagging behind by five points at the start of the final round, were most optimistic about their winning prospects on the final day with 32 singles matches to be competed, but somehow as the day progressed their key players caused their undoing by not playing to potential and letting nerves take over.
That however should not take the credit away from the determined effort of the Lahori golfers, because every team member reflected cool maturity in shot making. Most intimidating was the form of Amer Mehmood who won his match against Asad by a margin of 6-4, which means that he was 6 up with four holes to play, thereby leaving him unbeatable on that day.
Also enthusiastic in their winning approach were quite a few of Amer’s team mates like Rizwan Shafi, Agha Asad, Usman Cheema, Faisal Syed, Fareed Bajwa, Ahmed Gulzar, Hashim Butt, Muhammed Leghari, Shahid Abbas, Dr. Dildar, Faisal Ali Malik and Omer Salamat. The match between Sameer Iftikhar and Imran Habib of Karachi was a cliff hanger and some extremely good putts on the closing holes made Sameer the proud winner.
For Karachi, the winners in singles matches were Hussain Kasim, Qasim Habib, Sibtain Haji, Altaf Hashwani, Adnan Sohail, Nadir Leghari, Rashid Malik, Mujtaba Ali, Adil Haji and Yasir Zaidi. Of course there were six drawn matches and those involved in the sea saw battles were Umair Shah(LHR) and Taufeeq (KH), Tariq Mushtaq and Ejaz Khan, Imran Miraj and Arif Islam, Lt Gen(r) Tariq and Zahid Ebrahim, Azfar Hassan and Asif Ahmed and Sardar Murad and Mansoor Teli.
As for the daily scores , Team Lahore had 10 points as against Karachi’s 6 in the scrambles contest, and on the second day Team Lahore compiled 8. 5 against 7. 5 for Karachi in the best ball competition; on the final day Lahore fetched 17. 0 whereas Karachi managed 15. 0 in the singles competition, thus enabling Lahore to pick up the trophy.
